Searching for reverse phone lookup services can become confusing. You may begin with a simple internet search, believing it will quickly appear and you'll find the information you require with minimal work. Yet what actually appears is a long list of paid directories which vary from less than a buck for one lookup to over fifteen dollars for a service subscription.
Changing your search to specify free reverse phone lookup delivers even more pay sites hiding behind claims to be free. They sometimes allow you to enter the number for free and deliver very useless information such as the city and state, but in order to see the useful information like a name or address you will once again be asked to hand over a fee.
Completely free reverse phone lookup does not exist. Providers of this information put out great measures and sometimes money to assemble information such as unpublished home phone numbers, cellular numbers, and sometimes address histories. They have no use for this information other than to deliver it to consumers for a small charge.
Where you go from here depends on how much you really desire to find out the person registered to that phone number. In the age of identity fraud many people won't just access the first site they find and reveal their credit card information. Finding the most trustworthy directories is just as important as when you purchase tennis shoes or purses online.
Finding the information you want isn't very hard, once you locate a reputable service.
There are a growing number of competing websites all offering different fees and offering different combinations of data. When you only want to identify the name connected to a particular phone number calling your home or want to know exactly who your teenager is talking with in the middle of the night, you may not have the time to compare different directories.
The most effective answer may be to go with a name that many of us have grown up with and use the online version of the yellow pages. There is a sense of security when you use a common household name that has been trusted for years. You can search a phone number and get very basic information here for free, including whether the number is a cell phone or landline and a map indicating the general location if it is a home or business. You won't find much beyond that, especially if you are researching a cell phone or a home phone number that is unpublished.
Be aware at this point because there are links from these pages that will deliver additional information, like registered names and desired addresses, for a fee. These links go to other webpages, so you no longer necessarily have the security of the yellow pages website so you need to ensure the reputation of these websites just as with any other. Yellow pages itself is not going to give you much information other than a general location; you will have to look elsewhere for more, especially if you wish to research a cell phone or unpublished number.
The most effective way to find reverse phone lookup websites for basic needs is to go to a trustworthy service with a reasonable one time fee accepted with a secure payment system. If you only need a one time number search then it is probably not worth the fee to sign up for a unlimited directory. Locate one that offers a one time lookup for a minor charge, often just a dollar or two.
Forking over a huge fee for small amounts of information or being asked to pay by sending personal information through email or other non-secure methods are clear signals of a scam.